Roam Like Home in the EU

An ambitious overhaul of the EU telecoms rules in 2016 has resulted in the end of roaming charges when travelling in the EU and comes into force from today 15th June 2017.

Strong net neutrality rules have also been enshrined into EU law protecting the right of every European to access Internet content, without discrimination. Users will be free to access the content of their choice without being unfairly blocked or slowed down anymore, and paid prioritisation will no longer be allowed.

Prices for roaming calls and SMS have already fallen by 80% since 2007 and Data roaming is as much as 91% cheaper compared to 2007.

The new regulations present further challenges for RA professionals to ensure not only compliance with EU regulations and billing accuracy, but to also provide a positive customer roaming experience to avoid ‘Bill-Shock’ occurrences.

BluGem has been working hard with our clients to test their networks as the changes came into force at midnight on the 15th June, and have successfully completed roaming test audits to provide assurance to cover the new EU changes.

Bundle allowance caps were a key area of our testing, as fair usage rules mean there are limits on Data caps when roaming that differ to domestic Data cap allowances.